THE

LIFE OF
OF DRYDEN,

BY

DR. JOHNSON.

OF the great poet whofe life I am about to delineate, the

curiofity which his reputation muft excite will require a difplay more ample than can now be given. His contemporaries, however they reverenced his genius, left his life unwrit ten; and nothing therefore can be known beyond what casual mention and uncertain tradition have fupplied.

JOHN DRYDEN was born Auguft 9, 1631*, at Aldwinkle near Oundle, the fon of Erafmus Dryden of Titchmersh; who was the third fon of Sir Erasmus Dryden, baronet, of Canons Afhby. All these places are in Northamptonshire; but the original stock of the family was in the county of Huntingdon +.

He is reported by his laft biographer, Derrick, to have inherited from his father an estate of two hundred a year, and to have been bred, as was said, an Anabaptist. For either

* Mr. Malone has lately proved that there is no fatisfactory evidence for this date. The infcription on Dryden's monument fays only natus 1632. See Malone's Life of Dryden, prefixed to his "Critical and Miscellaneous Profe Works." p. 5. note. C.

+ Of Cumberland. Ibid. p. 10. C.

VOL. I.

of these particulars no authority is given. Such a fortune ought to have secured him from that poverty which seems always to have oppreffed him; or, if he had wafted it, to have made him ashamed of publishing his neceffities. But though he had many enemies, who undoubtedly examined his life with a scrutiny fufficiently malicious, I do not remember that he is ever charged with waste of his patrimony. He was indeed fometimes reproached for his first religion. I am therefore inclined to believe that Derrick's intelligence was partly true, and partly erroneous *.

From Westminster School, where he was inftructed as one of the King's Scholars by Dr. Bufby, whom he long after continued to reverence, he was in 1650 elected to one of the Westminster scholarships at Cambridge +.

Of his fchool performances has appeared only a poem on the death of Lord Haftings, composed with great ambition of fuch conceits as, notwithstanding the reformation begun by Waller and Denham, the example of Cowley still kept in reputation. Lord Haftings died of the fmall pox; and his poet has made of the puftules first rofebuds, and then gems; at last he exalts them into ftars; and fays,

No comet need foretel his change drew on,
Whofe corpfe might feem a conftellation.

At the university he does not appear to have been eager of poetical diftinction, or to have lavished his early wit either on fictitious fubjects or publick occafions. He probably confi→ dered, that he, who proposed to be an author, ought first to be a ftudent. He obtained, whatever was the reason, no fellowship in the College. Why he was excluded cannot now

Mr. Derrick's Life of Dryden was prefixed to a very beautiful and cor rect edition of Dryden's Mifcellanies, published by the Tonfons in 1760, 4 vols. 8vo. Derrick's part, however, was poorly executed, and the edition never became popular. C.

He went off to Trinity College, and was admitted to a Bachelor's De gree in Jan. 1653-4, and in 1657 was made M. A. C.

be known, and it is vain to guefs; had he thought himself injured, he knew how to complain. In the life of Plutarch he mentions his education in the College with gratitude; but, in a prologue at Oxford, he has thefe lines:

Oxford to him a dearer name shall be

Than his own mother-univerfity;

Thebes did his rude, unknowing youth engage;
He chooses Athens in his riper age.

It was not till the death of Cromwell, in 1658, that he became a public candidate for fame, by publishing Heroic Stanzas on the late Lord Protector; which, compared with the verses of Sprat and Waller on the fame occafion, were fufficient to raise great expectations of the rifing poet.

When the King was restored, Dryden, like the other panegyrifts of ufurpation, changed his opinion, or his profeffion, and published ASTREA REDUX; a poem on the happy Refloration and Return of his most facred Majesty King Charles the Second.

The reproach of inconftancy was, on this occafion, shared with fuch numbers, that it produced neither hatred nor difgrace! if he changed, he changed with the nation. It was, however, not totally forgotten when his reputation raised him enemies.

The fame year he praised the new King in a fecond poem on his restoration. In the ASTREA was the line,

An horrid ftillness firft invades the ear,

And in that filence we a tempeft fear

for which he was perfecuted with perpetual ridicule, perhaps with more than was deferved. Silence is indeed mere privation; and, fo confidered, cannot invade; but privation likewife certainly is darkness, and probably cold; yet poetry has never been refused the right of afcribing effects or agency to them as to pofitive powers. No man fcruples to fay that durknefs hinders him from his work; or that cold has killed the plants. Death is also privation; yet who has made any

difficulty of affigning to Death a dart and the power of ftriking?

In fettling the order of his works there is fome difficulty; for, even when they are important enough to be formally offered to a patron, he does not commonly date his dedication; the time of writing and publishing is not always the fame; nor can the first editions be eafily found, if even from them could be obtained the neceffary information *.

The time at which his first play was exhibited is not certainly known, because it was not printed till it was, fome years afterwards, altered and revived; but fince the plays are faid to be printed in the order in which they were written, from the dates of fome, thofe of others may be inferred; and thus it may be collected, that in 1663, in the thirty-second year of his life, he commenced a writer for the stage; compelled undoubtedly by neceffity, for he appears never to have loved that exercise of his genius, or to have much pleased himfelf with his own dramas.

Of the stage, when he had once invaded it, he kept poffeflion for many years; not indeed without the competition of rivals who sometimes prevailed, or the cenfure of criticks, which was often poignant and often juft; but with such a degree of reputation as made him at least secure of being heard, whatever might be the final determination of the publick.

His first piece was a comedy called the Wild Gallant. He began with no happy auguries; for his performance was fo much difapproved, that he was compelled to recal it, and change it from its imperfect state to the form in which it now appears, and which is yet fufficiently defective to vindicate the criticks.

I wish that there were no neceffity of following the progrefs of his theatrical fame, or tracing the meanders of his mind through the whole series of his dramatick performances; it will be fit, however, to enumerate them, and to take espe

The order of his plays has been accurately afcertained by Mr. Ma done. C.

cial notice of thofe that are diftinguifhed by any peculiarity, intrinfick or concomitant; for the compofition and fate of eight-and-twenty dramas include too much of a poetical life to be omitted.

In 1664, he publifhed the Rival Ladies, which he dedicated to the Earl of Orrery, a man of high reputation both as a writer and as a statesman. In this play he made his effay of dramatick rhyme, which he defends, in his dedication, with sufficient certainty of a favourable hearing; for Orrery was himself a writer of rhyming tragedies.

He then joined with Sir Robert Howard in the Indian Queen, a tragedy in rhyme. The parts which either of them wrote are not distinguished.

The Indian Emperor was published in 1667. It is a tragedy in rhyme, intended for a fequel to Howard's Indian Queen. Of this connection notice was given to the audience by printed bills, diftributed at the door; an expedient fuppofed to be ridiculed in the Rehearsal, where Bayes tells how many reams he has printed, to inftill into the audience fome conception of his plot.

In this play is the defcription of Night, which Rymer has made famous by preferring it to thofe of all other poets.

The practice of making tragedies in rhyme was introduced foon after the Restoration, as it feems by the Earl of Orrery, in compliance with the opinion of Charles the Second, who had formed his tafte by the French theatre; and Dryden, who wrote, and made no difficulty of declaring that he wrote only to please, and who perhaps knew that by his dexterity of verfification he was more likely to excel others in rhyme than without it, very readily adopted his master's preference. He therefore made rhyming tragedies, till, by the prevalence of manifeft propriety, he seems to have grown afhamed of making them any longer.

To this play is prefixed a very vehement defence of dra. matic rhyme, in confutation of the preface to the Duke of Lerma, in which Sir Robert Howard had cenfured it.